The Oracle made a dismissive sound. “In any case, that’s over now. It might have been amusing to make Odin suffer as I did, but his time is over. Mine begins. With the new runes, and the General’s Horse, which you have thoughtfully provided for me, as well as a corporeal host, I can travel wherever I please. But as for letting you leave this place—I’m afraid that’s out of the question. All I need is Jonathan. The rest of you are expendable.”
“Is that so?” said Heidi. “We’ll soon see about that—”
And assuming her primary Aspect—clothed from head to toe in flame, merciless and terrible (I’m not going to lie, I was aroused)—she took a step towards Jonathan Gift, and flung a single runebolt. . . .
Hagall, the Destroyer, crossed with Sól, the sun-rune in its most deadly, primitive form: a powerful combination. Flung with all the strength and guile of Gullveig-Heid, the Golden One, the missile whickered across the hall. . . .
“Stop her!” I cried to Thor, and quickly flung up the runeshape Ýr as a shield to protect the Architect. Meanwhile Thor closed on Heidi; but Heidi’s rune was powerful, and, punching through the runeshield, it struck Jonathan Gift full in the face.
Jonathan cried out in pain, clapping his hand to his left eye. But the runeshield had done at least something to halt the speed of the Temptress’s runebolt. The damage was superficial, although the wound looked like a nasty one. Jonathan Gift was still standing, blood dripping through his fingers. But now the Oracle’s presence swelled invisibly all around, filling the air with incense and the sound of breaking glass.
“YOU DARE TO ATTACK ME?” it said, in that giant, inhuman voice. “AND HERE, OF ALL PLACES? USING MY RUNES?”
I winced as shards of stained glass scattered around us like shrapnel. This, I thought, was where my plan might be starting to get just a little out of control. The Oracle was already enraged. Every strong emotion meant a risk of it waking up. And a wakened Oracle would mean the end of this dream, with great risk to the rest of us. So far, the dream had been strong enough to survive our retrieval of the Head and its transportation to another World. But the presence of Jonathan Gift made for a volatile chemistry. The colours of the dream had become ominously lurid, boiling with captive energy. I was only too aware that the bubble shielding us from the raw and deadly stuff of Dream might burst at any moment.
I started to move towards Sleipnir, my only avenue of escape. The Oracle loomed over me like a curse. One more surprise might awaken it—
And then a familiar voice spoke up. “But they’re not your runes. Are they?” it said.
4.
I’d almost forgotten Jumps in the drama of the scene. This was not her world, but mine—a world of uncertainty, and tricks, and colossal powers in conflict. She was trapped inside the mind of a god—or something very like one—and to be honest, the fact that she wasn’t climbing the walls and gibbering came as a bit of a surprise. I mean, a life of fluffy toys and penguin slippers and having kind of a crush on the guy who plays Thor in the movies, and wanting to be skinny, and worrying about what the other kids might say if they knew you liked kissing girls—it’s not much of a preparation for something on a grander scale.
And yet she seemed calm enough to me. Certainly calmer than she’d been the day she flipped out in the English exam. I struggled to understand how a test on twentieth-century novelists could be more important than being trapped between Worlds with an entity that could swallow you up as easily as the World Serpent inhaling fish, and found that I really couldn’t.
She thinks she’s asleep. She still thinks she’s going to wake up if it gets too freaky.
I gave her a warning nudge. “Shh. For gods’ sakes, let him forget you’re here. You’re in the flesh now. You can be hurt.”
But her words had had immediate effect. The light from the dome began to darken ominously. Suddenly, shadows appeared at the base of the great marble pillars, long shadows that crept like snakes across the colourful mosaic floor.
Heidi and Thor had paused in their circling of each other, glam trembling at their fingertips.
“EXCUSE ME?” said the giant voice of the Oracle.
Jumps gave a little shrug. She looked a little older than the last time I’d looked in the mirror: as if over the course of a single dream, she had left adolescence behind.
“Just saying,” she said. “They’re not your runes. Isn’t that what your Prophecy said? New runes for Odin’s heirs?”
Hot damn. She’d been paying attention.
The temperature in the great hall dropped a sudden thirty degrees. The pillars that looked so like Isa, with their swags of ornamentation, now gleamed with baleful blue light. The Oracle’s voice swelled, the rage in it trembling.
“WHAT?”
“You said that Odin had heirs,” said Jumps. “That means the runes belong to them. Not to Gullveig-Heid, not to you—” I tried to make her be quiet, but Jumps was never what you’d call open to suggestions.
“ODIN’S HEIRS ARE NOT YET BORN,” came the Oracle’s booming voice.
“Doesn’t matter, does it?” said Jumps. “You said the runes would come to them. You should know. You’re supposed to be an Oracle.”
“YOU QUESTION ME?” said the voice from every corner of that World. All of us—corporeal or not—put our hands over our ears, but the volume did not abate.
“Just saying,” said Jumps. “Odin’s heirs. You ought to know who they are. Who they’ll be. I mean, if you know the future.”
“OF COURSE I KNOW,” said the Oracle.
“Okay,” said Jumps. “Whatever.”
If anything, the temperature dropped still more. Snow began to fall from the dome. The ice on the pillars began to bloom like massive clusters of white moss.
“DID YOU JUST SAY ‘WHATEVER’ TO ME?”
Jumps made an odd little gesture, half shrug, half head waggle. I’d noticed it before, when we were discussing food choices. I’d found it infuriating then, and it seemed to have much the same effect on Mimir.
“Well, to be fair,” said Jumps, “I haven’t actually heard you ever make a prophecy. So far it’s just been a whole load of intimidation and threats.”
“I SPEAK OF TWO TENDER SHOOTS THAT GROW,” said the Oracle, in a grating voice. “ONE THE OAK, AND ONE THE ASH. ONE THE HORSE, AND ONE THE BONE. ONE FROM EARTH, AND ONE FROM STONE.”
I saw Jonathan Gift look up. One hand was still clapped to his eye, but I could tell he was paying attention. Heidi, too, was listening. Even Thor seemed aware that he’d heard something of importance.
Jumps alone was unimpressed. “Bit vague. Just saying, that could mean anything.”
“I SPEAK AS I MUST,” said the Oracle. “I SPEAK AS I MUST, AND WILL NOT BE SILENT.”
“No, you never shut up, do you?” said Jumps.
I told you she was annoying. But at that moment I could have kissed her, if that hadn’t felt a bit creepy, even for me. And yet as I was cheering her, I could also feel one of those human sensations that I didn’t quite understand: a fear that was not on my own behalf.
“Don’t,” I said. “You’ve said enough.”
She grinned. “Was that a prophecy?”
I nodded.
“So, it’s what you wanted, right? This is what you came here for?”
I nodded again. “But it’s dangerous. Remember, in this world, he’s a god.”
“He’s not a god. He’s a bully,” said Jumps. “You taught me to stand up to bullies.”
“Er, not the same thing,” I said. “Bullies are people who call you names, not immortal megalomaniacs with the power to crush your soul.”
Jumps grinned. “Let’s see, shall we? Let’s make it prophesy again.” And she turned back to the Oracle, its head high up in the icy vault, waved her arms, and shouted, “Hey! Hey you up there!”
Once more, I tried to silence her. But I could see it was too late. The dream was beginning to collapse. Ice fell from the ceiling; darkness descended from the sky. Against the dome, t
he river Dream roiled and crashed and tumbled. I knew what that meant. I’d expected it—although, to be fair, I’d rather planned on being over the hills and far away by the time the proverbial excrement hit the proverbial ventilation unit. Destabilized by recent events, its power challenged, its vanity hurt, tricked into revelation, at last, the Oracle was waking up.
5.
It started with the ceiling: that gorgeous dome of crystal glass, now cracked down the middle and swinging chandeliers of bundled ice. Swags of ice hung from the vaulting, tumbled down the pillars. The Oracle was still declaiming, its giant voice filling the Worlds:
“I SPEAK OF SEVEN SLEEPERS, BOUND WITH RUNES UNDER A MOUNTAIN. AND ONE WHO, IN A NET OF FIRE, STILL LIVES IN WISDOM’S FOUNTAIN.”
“Another verse of prophecy, right?” cried Jumps above the roar of Dream. “Do you need to know any more?”
I shook my head. Seven Sleepers. The Vanir, perhaps? Wisdom’s Fountain? Mimir? Mimir’s Well? A clue, perhaps, to where the Vanir slept?
“Forget the Prophecy!” I said. “We have to go!”
“Hang on,” said Jumps.
I saw that her Aspect had changed again. In dreams, that often happens, though I’d never seen it happen to a human in corporeal form. Now she was a young woman: strong, not unbeautiful, but a far cry from those girls at school and in those magazines she read. And although she must have been frightened—gods, even I was—she seemed to glow with her own inner light, a light that almost rivalled that of the Oracle’s fantasy.
That’s the thing about the Folk. They burn: they burn so brightly in their little span of time that even the gods cannot compete. And Jumps, so small, so weak, so scared, too scared to eat a pizza, too scared to be seen going out with a girl—Jumps was somehow suddenly, inexplicably marvellous.
Addressing the Oracle, she cried, “Is that really all you’ve got?”
“I’M SORRY?” said the Oracle.
“Is that all you’ve got?” repeated Jumps. “A few lines of verse—and bad verse, at that? Is that the extent of your power? I mean, who do you think you are? Telling people what to do? Thinking you’re better than everyone else, making them do whatever you want? Did you never think to yourself that Jonathan might have dreams of his own? Dreams that don’t involve being the pawn of a great big headless wonder?”
Beside me, I heard a hiss of what might have been laughter from Jonathan Gift. Heidi was looking incredulous. I tried in vain to quiet Jumps, but she was past being quieted. I’d seen her like this twice before, the night she’d threatened to cut her throat, and the night she’d confronted Heidi—and I knew she meant every word she said—after all, I’d been in her.
“A WHAT?” said the voice of the Oracle.
A silence fell on the great hall. But it wasn’t a comforting silence. It was the silence that precedes an earthquake or an avalanche, the silence of sleep paralysis. All around us, the dream had begun to shimmer, and shift, and soften. Great rents in the fabric of that World had opened, showing the many horrors without.
And then the Oracle spoke again, in a surprisingly level voice: “I SPEAK AS I MUST, AND WILL NOT BE SILENT. I SPEAK AS I MUST, AND YOU WILL HEAR. I SPEAK OF WORLDS BOTH OLD AND NEW, OF GODS BOTH NEW AND BROKEN. I SPEAK OF WAR ACROSS THE WORLD, AND WAR ACROSS THE OCEAN. I SPEAK OF A ONE-EYED WANDERER, ALLFATHER, ARCHITECT OF DREAMS. I SPEAK OF A SLEEPER AWAKENED—”
The giant voice suddenly stopped.
Uh-oh, I thought. Mimir got wise.
I looked at Thor. Once more I wondered if I should try to explain the goat, the wolf, and the cabbage. But he wouldn’t understand—and besides, the dream was coming apart. I could see it losing cohesion at last, as the walls and vaulting started to stretch like bubblegum—
“Get ready,” I told him. “Something’s going to happen. And when it does, I hope you’ll know what it is you have to do.”
Thor gave me the look of a thunder god goaded beyond endurance. “Why should I?” he said.
“Because you’re loyal. Because you’re brave. And because, although to be honest, I’m not a great authority on bravery or sacrifice, you’re actually pretty noble.” There came a sound from above our heads: the sound of the last of our time running out. “I’m going to say something now, Thor, that you might not have heard very often. I mean, it’s not as if we were friends, but of all the Aesir, you were perhaps the one who hated me the least. And Jumps always liked you, of course. She knew that if it ever came to someone making a sacrifice, of giving up their life to save the future of the gods, it would be you.”
Thor frowned. Above him, a sound like metal girders at breaking point.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but Thor never heard. With a single blast, the dome shattered into space dust, revealing the turbulence of Dream in all its dreadful glory. We were out of time at last. I flung myself on Sleipnir’s back, dragging Jumps and Jonathan Gift along with me through the flying debris.
I looked back at Jumps. “Remember the riddle I told you about the wolf, the goat, and the cabbage?”
She nodded. “What about them?”
I gestured at Jonathan. “Meet the wolf.”
Jumps’s eyes grew wide. “You mean—”
Jonathan grinned—a familiar grin—and winked at me from his one good eye. “Pleased to meet you, Jumps,” he said. “Captain, I’m ready. Let’s ride.”
6.
The story so far: A ferryman must carry one at a time a goat, a wolf, and a cabbage, whilst ensuring neither cargo happens to snack on the other. It looks impossible at first. Whichever order he takes them in, at some point either the goat will be left alone to eat the cabbage, or the wolf will be left with the goat, with predictably gruesome results.
And yet there is a solution—straightforward enough, at least, as long as you’re able to deploy some mental flexibility.
First the ferryman takes the goat, leaving the wolf with the cabbage. He drops off the goat at the far side of the river, then comes back for the cabbage, leaving the wolf on the near side. But (and this is the important bit) as he drops off the cabbage, he picks the goat back up again, bringing it to the near side with him. Then he ferries the wolf to the far side, leaving the goat in its original spot, and drops off the wolf with the cabbage. Finally, he goes back to collect the goat. Voilà. Problem solved.
But in the fracas that ensued, I had no leisure to explain to Jumps the details of my sleight of hand. Nor did I have the time to point out to Odin how much better my riddle was than his cat-in-the-box scenario. Dream was engulfing the bubble-World like Skól and Hati devouring the Sun and Moon. I was holding my runeshield with all the strength I could muster; Thor was wrestling Gullveig-Heid, who had suddenly realized that her ride was about to set off without her. And Odin, in the body of Gift, was grinning at me like a scythe.
“BETRAYAL!” roared the Oracle, having seen the deception at last. “YOU TOOK ME OUT OF MY WORLD BY STEALTH! YOU STOLE MY SERVANT AWAY FROM ME!”
I could have pointed out that Jonathan Gift had been more than happy to give up corporeal Aspect in exchange for that of a fluffy white dog, but there was little time to go into details. The Oracle’s dream was breaking apart, allowing glimpses of Jumps’s World through the fragmented cathedral. I could see Castle Hill in the distance, the light reflecting from Evan’s chair. I could see figures: Stella, Meg, and Evan, his face half turned towards me in the moonlight. And there was an object in his hands, an object the size of a cabbage, perhaps: an object that I recognized.
I mouthed a blasphemous prayer. I’d hoped that my plan wouldn’t come to this. I’d hoped for an easier form of escape. Failing that, I’d hoped that in case of emergency, Evan would know what to do. That memory of Jumps, and the eye, like a marble in her palm: that should have told him something. But whether or not he had understood the importance of the symbolism—the link between the eye and the Head—the message I had tried to convey to him through that distant memory—
Frankly, I had no idea of whether or not the boy
would know how much my life and the life of his friend depended on his actions. In the same way, I’d had no idea whether his role-playing skills would be good enough to convince Gullveig-Heid that Odin was still inside him. And now I had no way of knowing if what I had asked him to do would work, or whether it would be Game Over. I wasn’t happy about these things, but I can’t see what else I could have done, given what limited material I had to work with.
Please. Just do it. Just do it, I thought, clinging to Sleipnir’s mane as we fled towards the far edge of the dream. The bubble-World was breaking up even faster than before, pieces of the cathedral circling us like planets. Any one of those pieces might obliterate Jumps or the General, or knock our steed right out of the sky. At any second, the Oracle might awaken completely, leaving us to be torn apart in the vacuum of nonexistence.
Worse still, Heidi had finally understood the extent of my treachery, and had cast a web of binding-runes after Sleipnir as we fled. Naudr, the Binder, held us back, keeping us from leaving that World as it broke apart around us. But for Thor, whose courage was sadly not equalled by his intelligence, the penny either hadn’t quite dropped, or was somehow still dropping.
“Odin?” I heard his rumbling voice like thunder through the bubble-World. “Odin is the Architect?”
“Oh, get with the programme,” said Heidi. “This was a ruse from the very start. Don’t you see, you great oaf? This dream was a trap that is closing in. And, bodiless, without the General’s Horse, both of us will remain here.”
But Thor, at least, had understood. His loyalty to the General, even in this borrowed flesh, meant that he was ready to do whatever he could to buy us the time we needed. Heidi had lifted a hand to cast another rune at Sleipnir, but Thor’s bulk was blocking her. For a moment, Temptress and Thunderer stood almost close enough to embrace, and then his arms were around her, and hers around him, and locking tight—
This had better be worth it, he growled, his words reaching me from across the impossible delta of Dream.
The Testament of Loki Page 21